ever, for the rigours of the training
steal away that peculiar charm as the great city does the bloom from
the cheek of a country maiden.

I listened for the verses of the song which I knew should follow, but
the singer's voice was still and the faint glow of the lamp was
extinguished.

CHAPTER XIX

The "Green-eyed Monster" Awakes

Rita had just had her first real lesson in English. Already,--but
without giving her the reason why, except that it was incorrect,--I had
taught her never to say "ain't" and "I seen"; also that "Gee," "Gosh"
and "you bet your life" were hardly ladylike expressions. She now
understood that two negatives made a positive and that she should
govern her speech accordingly.

She was an apt pupil; so anxious to improve her way of talking that
mine was not a task, it was merely the setting of two little feet on a
road and saying, "This is your way home," and those two little feet
never deviated from that road for a single moment, never side-stepped,
never turned back to pick up the useless but attractive words she had
cast from her as she travelled.

How I marvelled at the great difference the elimination of a few of the
most common of her slangy and incorrect expressions and the
substitution of plain phrases in their places made in her diction!
Already, it seemed to me as if she understood her English and had been
studying it for years.

How easy it was, after all, I fancied, as I followed my train of
thought, for one, simply by elimination, to become almost learned in
the sight of his fellow men!

But now Rita had been introduced to the whys and wherefores in their
simplest forms, so that she should be able, finally, to construct her
thoughts for herself, word by word and phrase by phrase, into rounded
and completed sentences.

At the outset, I had told her how the greatest writers in English were
not above reading and re-reading plain little Grammars such as she was
then studying, also that the favourite book of some of the most famous
men the world ever knew, a book which they perused from cover to cover,
year in and year out, as they would their family Bible,--was an
ordinary standard dictionary.

I gave Rita her thin little Grammar and a note book in which to copy
her lessons, and she slipped these into her bosom, hugging them to her
heart and laughing with pleasure.

She put out her hands and grasped mine, then, in her sweet,
unpremeditated way, she threw her arms round